


worth the price

by wingeddserpent



Category: Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/wingeddserpent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reeve tries to explain sacrifice to someone who understands it better than he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	worth the price

It’s not her style. He knows this, knows that something must have snapped to have made her come to this. Calmly, he looks at her, at her twisted, angry face, at the unkempt black hair that falls across her face.

“Dammit, Reeve,” she whispers, and flicks the safety back with efficiency if not grace.

That’s a surprise. It reminds him of before—when she was sixteen and all angry lines and motion. These days, she’s long graceful, deadly lines, made of motion but not defined by it. “Yuffie,” he says, “You’re over reacting.”

She snarls. “Bullshit.”

The gun shakes in her hand and he looks at it, so close to his face, and wonders if she would really shoot him. "Yuffie," he says, quietly.

"What, Reeve?" she asks, her voice shaking harder than the gun. "You think you've got a clue? You think you've got a fucking clue?"

Reeve takes a breath, trying to calm himself, because she's upset, and it will do neither of them any good if he's sitting here, angry or scared. He's got to diffuse this, has got to get Yuffie calmed down. Carefully, he holds up both of his hands—she snarls and presses the barrel of the gun to his forehead, and he looks up into her grey eyes. "Yuffie... I'm sorry. Sacrifices—"

"Do you know what it's like, Reeve, to watch the people you lead die? You wanna know what it's like when they look at you, right before that final breath? Dammit, Reeve, you knew it was a fucking trap," her finger tightens on the trigger; he closes his eyes.

"Yes. I knew," he pauses, "What else could I do? We needed to know what was in there. I had hoped that—it wouldn't be as bad as I feared. I was wrong, and for that, I am sorry, Yuffie. I'll do what I can for their families, but for their sacrifice, we'll be able to better fight this Deep Ground."

Her expression hardens. "Fuck you, Reeve. They're dead and it's our fault."

He's caught off guard at the blame sharing, and her mouth twists into that smirk she always wore when she talked about Wutai, and what the beaches looked like stained red with the blood of her people, or when she talked about Shinra and Rufus and the good they did for the world. "I trusted you. I trusted you to care about these people; I trusted you to believe they were more than a means to an end."

She looks away from him and lowers the gun. "I forgot that you can't form bonds sitting here in this goddamn office, filling out paperwork," her breath catches. "I knew my people, Reeve. I knew which ones were here to save the world, I knew which ones had kids, I knew which ones were here because it was a paycheck and their families needed that money. I knew which ones had families to go home to; I knew which ones didn't. You sent us in blind, and I trusted you to have my people's best interest at heart—and I was wrong. You care about what the WRO accomplishes, not the people in it. Not my tiny squad, not those men you asked me to lead into that fucking hole so you could figure out what the hell was in there."

"Yuffie—"

Yuffie raises the gun again; he falls silent, watching her, hands curling into fists. Because Yuffie doesn't get it—has never understood what it means to lead. What it means to sacrifice, what it means to have to choose, between the lives of a few or the lives of many—and then he blinks and looks at her again, at the lines written on her face that he swears weren't there last time he saw her and he swallows. Yuffie does understand. She lived during one of the bloodiest clashes in modern history; she was born to lead one of the most ruthless people ever to walk the world. She's seen this before—this sacrifice.

For a moment, he wonders if it's Godo she's really aiming the gun at.

"Yuffie, please," he says and feels her falter. "I'm sorry. If I had known—I would have sent for Vincent or just sent you or Cloud or Tifa. I honestly thought that, with you, they could handle it. I was wrong. But it—"

"It happens, Reeve?" and her voice cracks again and she flicks the safety on the gun and then drops it.

And he nods—he doesn't want to, knows it seems like making excuses, but it does happen, it does happen when you're trying to protect the people of a broken and chaotic world—and he opens his arms for her and she all but falls into his lap and sobs, buries her hands in his hair, and he winces at the feel of her nails scraping his scalp.

She's not gentle; he deserves it.

It says something of his sin that this is only the third time he's even seen Yuffie Kisaragi cry. She shakes in his arms, tiny, and pushes her face into his shoulder, trying to muffle the sound, and guilt settles over him, another layer to add to all the others he's had to bear.

Gently, he rubs circles in the small of her back and she shivers.

"Fuck, Reeve," she whispers, breath hot on his ear, "Why can't we be better heroes?"

And he wishes he had an answer for her, besides the fact that they're human, and therefore imperfect. It seems a pretty shitty answer to send to their families. Twelve dead, fifteen wounded, and one broken Yuffie.

But, when anyone asks, he'll say it was worth the price.

It will be a lie.


End file.
